I do some development on Windows 7, and I would like to standardize the various tools we use (versions of Java, maven, etc). I know for *nix platforms, I can use Chef or Puppet, but is there a tool designed for this for windows (I believe Puppet has Windows server support, but no guarantees on Windows 7).

Basically, when a new developer comes on the team or we update versions of tools, it would be nice to have an easy way for developers to update their systems. I guess I could write batch scripts to do this, but I didn't know if there was a more mature toolset for windows.

2 Answers
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I use Active Directory Group Policy for this. Software Installation policy and Administrative Templates do most of what I need. I write scripts when I need more functionality (I consider scripting to be pretty "mature", personally).

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is a "heavyweight" solution to Windows configuration management but, thusfar, I haven't been impressed by the "ROI" versus just using Active Directory's built-in functionality. I'd rather write a script to do what I want than be pinned into a corner with SCCM's functionality that, ultimately, I end up having to customize with scripts anyway.

I target for 100% of server and desktop computer configuration and user configuration all to be handled by Group Policy. Generally, though, there's a line I draw for software or configuration that needs to be performed on a small number of computers (typically 5 or less) where I'll configure things manually. (It really depends on whether or not I'll ever need to scale to beyond a small number of computers and what the work would be to deploy a repeatable solution.)

-1. Try doing comlpex visual studio this way and you are just one thing: dead. GPO does not deal with teh complex scenarios easily.
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TomTomFeb 13 '12 at 15:29

@TomTom - where in the question does he mention using Visual Studio?
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EEAAFeb 13 '12 at 15:32

He does not, but also java has similar requirements. Uless you manualyl apck up everything nicely it is just painfull. Very painfull.
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TomTomFeb 13 '12 at 15:34

Thanks. I'm not against writing windows scripts when needed, so I'll give this a shot.
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Jeff StoreyFeb 13 '12 at 15:36

@TomTom: I'd agree that some software doesn't lend itself well to using only the built-in functionality of Group Policy w/o scripting. (I don't know what you make of you mentioning Java, though. The JRE, for the last few years, has deployed very well via GPO.) For software that's more complex I'll use a script. I try not to have to do so, but sometimes it's the only way.
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Evan AndersonFeb 13 '12 at 15:50

thanks, I'll checkout some of these tools. I don't think an image is practical in this case though because there might be times where I want to do things like upgrade the version of tool X without a complete reinstall, but make it easy for all developers to do it in an easy way
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Jeff StoreyFeb 13 '12 at 15:19